Where Did ONA12 Attendees Come From?

After numerous hours on a plane, three journalists from La Nacion, a newspaper in Buenos Aires, Argentina, arrived in San Francisco to attend the ONA conference. They, with journalists from Italy, Australia and even as far away as India, comprise 5 to 10 percent of this year’s conference attendees.

For third year in a row, Florencia Coelho, manager of new media research and training for La Nacion, packed her bags and flew 6,400 miles away. She and her colleagues accepted the challenge of “dividing the schedule to try to cover all the sessions,” she said.

She said that attending ONA conferences has made a difference at La Nacion.Their data journalism team was born after attending a pre-conference workshop called “Data Journalism for Beginners” at the 2010 conference in Washington, D.C.

“Coming from a traditional newspaper setting, we believe that investing money and time on these types of events accelerate the way we adapt to (digital) change,” Coelho said.